I just Kickstarted Richard Borg's The Great War: The French Army Expansion. I got the Early Bird Veteran Package, which will be available for another 66 hours.

(Sorry, couldn't get the link to work).

My buddy Brian brought this up on our group's facebook page. A few of us backed the original and tanks kickstarter, but they haven't seen much play as there are so many games fighting for attention and 2 player games are harder yet. So myself and Jeff are going to pass on this one, though Brian is still getting it. So hopefully one day I'll get to try this with the French.

Well, it should be easy to make up an Epic (Double Board) Great War version for four players. I'm getting the replacement set of British and French with softer plastic, not to replace but to allow me enough forces to use two boards! If you guys own more than one set, that should be easier, as you also have enough cards, boards, and figures for two.

If it funny you guys should mention the epic double board idea as that is how my group of friends have been playing Risk 2210 for the last decade or so. Picked up a second copy of the game to double the area we fight over, along with double the number of cards and such. We don't always use the moon(s) though and have come up with several house rules for our version of the game. We even have custom commander cards we use. It does result in pretty long games though and we just play to a point where we can call a winner without actually having one person conquer every territory.

Speaking of Shifting Realms and their first Kickstart, I think it's a perfect example of what YK was saying here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yodaking

I believe the 'backed for the minis' crowd is the majority as I've seen the mini heavy games on KS get backed for hundreds of thousands of dollars (Zombiecided has passed 1 million more than once) while a non mini board game tends to get only tens of thousands of dollars in backing.

I feel certain that the gameplay in Shifting Realms is solid, but without minis, it just didn't grab the attention of people.

As I understood the original concept, the idea behind KS was that people could share their designs and that the hoi polloi could, if they believed in the people and in the designs, support them. In exchange for that support, the designer (or musician or whatever) would often have something in exchange for his or her backers.

It seems to me that Soaring Rhino is running a KS campaign close to the original spirit of Kickstarter. For better or for worse, from their perspective. Craig is a brilliant, veteran designer, with a long and uninterrupted string of excellent games bearing his name. The design of Shifting Realms looks good. So if people want to back it, and support the project from him & his brother, they can, and in exchange they will get a copy of the game.

They are eschewing the things that bring publicity and energy to a KS campaign. No minis, no stretch goals, no (or very little) activity on leading websites such as BGG, /r/boardgames, the larger FaceBook groups, etc. As far as I can tell, they have built the better mousetrap and will let it stand on its own.

Well, I believe that it is the better mousetrap, and I believe in Soaring Rhino. So I backed it, and it's funded, and hopefully it'll be the beginning of a long and successful for the Van Ness brothers.

In fairness to miniatures kickstarters, they do cost a lot more to produce and the pledge levels reflect that with higher costs. So if people spend $200-$400, then it will obviously bring in more than a primarily cardboard component game. Also, there are more types of customers for miniatures games. Some are just for the game itself, some want it for the game but also plan to use the minis for other games, and there are some that are are mostly hobbyists that don't care so much about the game because they are mostly interested painting the minis.

Thus, even if the gameplay isn't the best in those games, many people will still have use for the components, unlike with plain board games.

Regular board games have done really well on KS. Scythe, Mare Nostrum Empires and Gloomhaven have done really well. Near and Far, as well as Above and Below did well. Root is killing it now with over $300K.

The 7th Continent did $7 million.

Bears vs Babies brought in over $3 million

So there are a lot of non miniatures games that do bring in a ton of money. Ultimately, a game has to have something that seems interesting enough to draw a lot of backers. There is so much competition nowadays, they can't all bring in $100's of thousands or millions.

Its the only Risk game I still own, having had at some point almost all of them except what's come out in the last five years or so. Designed by CVN also, I believe.

Risk Europe is an excellent "Risk" game. Players use cards to perform specific actions. Those actions cards are placed in a row and some action cards can build on or benefit from previously played cards. The only aspect that is Risk-like is the combat which is just like Original Risk. It's an excellent game and has some very nice components.